Naruto stood in front of the massive iron gate that sealed away the Nine-Tails. This time, he wasn't just observing from within.
He was both outside and inside the mindscape.
A strange sensation—it was like experiencing the world from two different perspectives at once. One body stood in the sea of his subconscious, barefoot in the ankle-deep water. The other loomed behind the gate, massive and fanged, with burning crimson eyes.
The Nine-Tails looked back at him, its monstrous face contorted into a grin. A silent understanding passed between them.
And then, oddly, they both smiled.
Naruto flexed his fingers and glanced down at his body. It shimmered faintly with raw power. "Let's see what you're capable of," he muttered.
A warm surge began to flow into him—heavy, endless, and ancient.
Kurama's chakra poured into his human vessel like a tidal wave of heat and pressure. It didn't resist. There was no struggle for dominance now.
They were one.
Golden light erupted across Naruto's form, wrapping him in a radiant, flame-like cloak. Black sealing marks danced across his skin like living ink. His eyes blazed with vertical slits of burning orange, the pupils ringed in deeper red.
This was the form he'd once only seen in manga panels and anime—the glowing transformation that had stunned the world.
Kurama Mode.
The golden chakra pulsed with impossible energy, raw and primal. This was no partial cloak, no rampaging berserker state. It was a controlled, stabilized transformation—Kurama's full power tempered through Naruto's will.
He moved his hand slightly and watched the golden aura ripple like fire.
This… is incredible.
In the original timeline, it had taken years to reach this point—trust, understanding, pain. Here, he had skipped all of it by force, by fusion.
But Naruto knew something else. Something far more important.
This wasn't the end.
There was more.
The final forms—the Tailed Beast Mode, the Six Paths Sage Mode. Even further beyond that, the threshold of the gods. And now…
His gaze turned inward, where another energy stirred deep inside his merged form. Foreign. Unstable.
Nuclear fission.
It was the name the system in his mind had used, but it didn't truly belong to this world. Still, the effect was real. A destructive transformation unlike anything in Naruto canon.
He narrowed his eyes, drew in his breath, and activated it.
The seal-space began to tremble violently.
A low hum built beneath his feet as the very walls of the subconscious world started to crack. The torii gate behind him splintered as if under unbearable pressure.
Kurama's chakra coiled around his limbs again, shifting in hue—darker, denser, infused with pure destruction.
Symbols began to etch themselves across his golden cloak, deep crimson, warping and pulsing with volatile chakra patterns. His body was beginning to distort—not from instability, but from power overload.
This was a step beyond what had ever been shown.
And the seal couldn't take it.
Outside, in the real world, Jiraiya stumbled backward as the ground quaked beneath him. The clearing was scorched and split from the sheer pressure of the chakra bursting from Naruto's body.
"What the hell…?" he whispered, stunned. "This isn't the Nine-Tails I know."
The golden chakra around Naruto flared white-hot, rippling with atomic fury. The seal was coming undone. Not because of weakness, but because of raw, intentional force.
Jiraiya braced himself. "No… This isn't supposed to happen. I only loosened the seal slightly—what's causing this kind of release?!"
His heart pounded.
"Minato… I'm sorry. I may have just killed your son."
Inside the seal, Naruto stared at the iron gate.
The spiritual realm was collapsing around him. Cracks spread like lightning bolts across the sealed ground. Water evaporated into steam. The torii gates were shattered.
Kurama stood behind him, calm, unreadable.
Naruto took one final step forward and raised his fist.
Time to break free.
He struck the gate with all his might.
BOOM!
The iron shattered like glass. Fragments of the spiral sealing formula exploded outward as the chakra storm surged through the breach.
With the barrier gone, the sealed space completely unraveled.
But Naruto remained composed.
This form—he wasn't sure what to call it yet. It wasn't something that existed in canon. A weaponized state of Kurama Mode—twisted, condensed, and fused with the destructive nature of atomic energy. It was terrifying. Unstable. Unrepeatable.
And dangerous even to himself.
He could feel Kurama's vitality draining rapidly from overexertion.
"This mode…" he murmured. "It's not sustainable. Not yet."
He let the transformation fade.
The crimson lines dissolved. The golden glow dimmed. And the chakra receded into his core like the tide.
Kurama's presence slumped, worn but not hostile.
"Using it again might kill even you," the fox muttered.
Naruto nodded.
"I know."
It's a trump card. Nothing more. I can't afford to rely on it.
And yet, what he had accomplished in this moment was already enough.
Until—
Two lights flickered in the distance.
Naruto turned.
Oh. Right… them.
The chakra signatures were weak but familiar, swirling in the form of two figures just beginning to take shape.
A man with messy blond hair and a white cloak.
A woman with long red hair, her expression filled with warmth.
His parents.
Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki.
Naruto blinked. Their chakra ghosts had been hidden deep within the seal all along, a fail-safe triggered only in the direst circumstances.
Their memories, their final messages—this was the moment they were supposed to meet him.
He stared at them for a heartbeat.
Then scowled.
I don't need them.
The Nine-Tails' cloak flared to life again.
Twin chakra arms formed in an instant—massive golden limbs with claws like razors. Before the two chakra forms could fully stabilize, the arms lunged forward.
Snap.
Both Minato and Kushina's figures shattered under the impact, crumbling into motes of light.
Fragments of memory floated in the air—remnants of their chakra.
Naruto stepped forward and seized them, absorbing the flickering pieces into his body.
A rush of warmth. Nostalgia. Sadness. Love.
And knowledge.
He now held flashes of Minato's experience—techniques, battle insights, and the foundational understanding of the Flying Thunder God technique.
From Kushina came traces of Uzumaki clan heritage—sealing arts, chakra control, forgotten jutsu passed down from an ancient bloodline.
But not all of it.
Many techniques required pure Uzumaki lineage—something this body technically possessed, but perhaps not in full.
Still, Naruto smiled.
It's enough.
In the real world, the air finally stilled.
Naruto opened his eyes.
The transformation was over. The chakra storm had vanished.
He stood motionless in the clearing, steam rising from his shoulders.
Jiraiya stared at him, wide-eyed, drenched in sweat and blood.
"…Naruto?"
Naruto turned to him, golden eyes unreadable.
"So," he said, his voice unnervingly calm. "What's next?"